Chicago Duplex Down Rehab

My wife has been using our stairwell cabinet drop down desk as her personal office, which has been great, but she pointed out that there was no adequate lighting.  I had some left over 'LED strip lighting' from another project outside the house.  All I needed to do this was: 30" LED strip lighting (bought on AMAZON from LEDWholesalers), 12V/2A power supply, and an 'inline low voltage switch'.  The LED strip has an adhesive backing so it was easy to attach to the top inside of the desk.  We still have some work to do on cleaning up the power cords (computers, phones, and now the LED lighting).

DS Construction finished the gang-way sidewalk yesterday.  Its quite a change of the old one which was tilted toward the neighbors property, and had large gaps between the sidewalk and building.  Finished sidewalk as of this morning, curing! First drop of concrete from Prairie Material . Concrete form, right on property line.  Neighbor fence will be adjacent to concrete on neighbor property. Retaining wall form for 3 steps down, under the bay window.

I knew the right time to replace the gangway sidewalk would be during the construction of a new house next door.  After some sleuthing, I found out that DS Construction is contracted demolition and concrete contractor.  I talked with their boss a few months ago, and he agreed to replace our sidewalk as part of the work he was already doing here.  When the crew finally showed up, they seemed unaware and ambivalent about the idea.  They said "if Stan said yes, then its yes".  No contract.  I called the general contractor, and they said its common for subs to just have verbal agreements because they work with them so often.  Anyway, it was easy to convince them that now was absolutely the best time to pull out the old, collapsed sidewalk.  I used a steel iron to knock out around the drain at the bottom of the stairs myself, because they took out the entire sidewalk (all 125 feet) in a couple hours using the digger.  Its turning out to be a win-w...

FINALLY... The completely dilapidated neighboring house will be demo'ed on Monday.  The garage came down today.  I made verbal deal with the demolition and concrete contractor to also remove and replace our gangway sidewalk.  Updates soon..

I happen to have an extra sconce fixture.  Long story short, it SHOULD work.  I used an ohmmeter to check out all 3 sockets.  If you want it, just shoot me an email. Gatco Latitude 2 - polished chrome

I finally had a few days to finish up the bathroom vanity during the holiday break.  The slab drawer fronts had been waiting in my closet for a couple years! :(  I was somewhat nervous about putting these on because if you screw them up, you can't just go back to hardware store to buy another set.  After reviewing a few youtube videos on the subject of attaching drawer fronts, I decided to use the 'double sided tape' method.  You use double sided 3M tape to mount the drawer front to the drawer, double check that its in place (proper distance from other fronts and doors, level, etc.), and then use 1 1/4" screws to secure it to the drawer.  This is the basic idea.  Some details are discussed below. Before mounting the fronts, I predrilled the holes for the drawer pulls using a drill press.  The drill press makes perfect holes in the right location and straight in. I used 3mm Tavy tile spacers to mount the drawer fronts.  I had to hold the ...